Shin landed on top of the mostly perpendicular barrel, at the very tip of the spear. Undertaker descended its length by tumbling down as opposed to running, arriving at the opening between the wings on its back. As his unit was about to slide from the momentum, he thrust his pile driver down to brake, then used his blades to tear open the maintenance panel in the way.
The original Morpho had stirred and squirmed when Shin attached himself to it, trying to shake him off, but it appeared this ghost lacked the fighting spirit that Frederica’s knight, Kiriya Nouzen, possessed. At the time, the Legion hadn’t yet discovered how to turn themselves into butterflies to escape, and so the Morpho had resorted to shooting directly above the barrel to blow both itself and Shin away. This one didn’t have that kind of firm resolve.
…Albeit even that young man, with his firm resolve, met his second death without ever taking revenge for his ruler.
Shin could hear a voice over the radio. It was the murmuring of an infantry soldier speaking through an emergency frequency common to all units.
“If you can do that… If you can beat a Morpho that easily…”
Why didn’t you take it out sooner? Why didn’t you protect the Federacy? Why…
…didn’t you save us?
Shin couldn’t suppress a sneer. That’s what they’re saying?
—You have power, too, after all.
These soldiers, and the survivors of the Hail Mary Regiment who’d howled in anger and hate as they disappeared in a flurry of bullets. Each and every one of them had power. Even those young men who couldn’t save their friends with all that hatred burning through them—pinned the blame on someone else.
They could all point at another person and say it was someone else’s fault, something else’s fault. They had the power to condemn others and call them evil.
When it came to people… Even those without the power to save themselves had the power to push others down. The power to warp someone nearby into evil.
He remembered it still. The face of those young men, so united in their thoughts and emotions that he couldn’t tell their faces apart. Those fearsome expressions of humans who had cast aside individuality to become parts of the group.
Seeing those horrible faces made Shin utterly terrified at the time— of this power that could make an entire country shout as one and of its outcome, which was the Republic and the Eighty-Sixth Sector.
With that kind of power, the Republic could have even destroyed the Legion if they really put their minds to it, but all they did was use it to knock the Eighty-Six down. And the outcome was the Eighty-Sixth Sector. Shouting at the top of one’s lungs that it was all someone else’s fault eventually brought the Republic to ruin, the Hail Mary Regiment to ruin, and now it was doing the same to these soldiers.
This is why we can’t win. This is why we lose. This is why…you’ll always be helpless.
He averted his gaze, and his reticle followed, aligning on the Morpho’s processor. He switched to his primary armament, the 88 mm tank turret. As the silvery Liquid Micromachines bubbled, likely attempting to escape, Shin fixed his eyes on them and mercilessly pulled the trigger.
Fire—impact, and burst.
Flames billowed from the Morpho. Countless Liquid Micromachine butterflies soared off, abandoning their body. And somewhere within the unit, an independent circuit triggered a self-destruct sequence.
All this had been previously observed and confirmed. So Shin gave a brief order. And the Eighty-Six, already accustomed to hunting down Morpho, switched their ammunition type before he even said the word.
“Fire.”
As Undertaker jumped off the giant dragon’s carcass, countless incendiary rounds ruptured behind him. The silver butterflies were caught in the inferno, and the hellish vision of one child soldier’s screams lingered. As the Reginleifs calmly walked away from the burning dragon’s corpse, the Morpho self-destructed in a blinding flash that saw them off.
✦ ✦ ✦
They arrived at some city ruins on the western part of the former Niantemis territory, fifteen kilometers away from the Federacy territory of Neunarkis. They were only one day’s walk away from Neunarkis—and yet Citri lacked the strength to make even that short journey.
Niantemis was annexed by the Empire over a century ago, and the city ruins gave the impression that the paved, maintained Republic townscape had been refurbished into the form of a winding, mazelike city meant to serve as an Imperial stronghold. Only the sign of a train station from across the fence, where the tracks heading west cut off, stood as testament of this city’s old homeland.
And yet seeing the name NEUNARKIS on that faded sign made Citri smile.
“Yuuto… We’re in the Republic. This is the country where I…”
Where we were born.